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Where I'm Featured

I've been dyeing, sewing, painting, drawing, beading and felting in Denver, Colorado for quite some time. I especially love starting with a blank piece of paper or fabric and coming up with my own designs from scratch.

I've been making art dolls for several decades and out of this evolved my cloth pins and ornaments. Each one is like a miniature version of my larger art dolls.
My pins and ornaments are first sewn of good quality white cotton fabric and then stuffed with polyfill. Then they're hand dyed, hand painted and finally beaded. A pin back is sewn securely on the back of the pins. Because of the nature of the hand dyeing, no two are ever exactly alike.
My spouse loves to spin and weave, and I dye warps for his beautiful handwoven scarves.
I've been painting my entire life and especially love to paint in a celtic or medieval style, but pure fantasy is also great fun.
The well fleshed orange kitty that my shop is named after is Donovan who has his own web site.

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Tuesday, October 21, 2008

I harvested my butternut squash a few days ago. It was a good harvest, although I think I've never had a bad harvest of butternut squash. I've moved them all to shelves in the garage where they will stay until sometime in January or February, at which time I'll cook them all up and store them in the freezer.Butternut is far better if not eaten as soon as it's picked. If it's allowed to site a while in a nice cool dark place, it'll ripen further and get much sweeter. Once it gets to that stage, I cook it and save the flesh in the freezer. I've found it easier to cook it with the skin on and then just scoop out the soft flesh. Sometimes I save the seeds before cooking the squash and roast them with butter and salt. I prefer them over pumpkin seeds since they are smaller and more tender. The cooked butternut stores well in the freezer. I'm currently trying to use up last year's crop so I have room for this year's. It's very nice as a side heated up in the microwave with a bit of butter, and makes a fantastic "pumpkin" pie.